"I create weal and I create woe." (Isaiah)
I get that "evil" and "woe" are not the same as sin, but still, the verses give one pause. Mind you, across the gates of Hell, says Dante, are these words:
GIUSTIZIA MOSSE IL MIO ALTO FATTOREAnd, finally, "Knowing and seeing aren't causing." Everything is "now" to God. He doesn't "foresee" my sin, He sees it in His now but my future.
FECEMI LA DIVINI POTESTATE
LA SOMMA SAPIENZA E 'L PRIMO AMORE.Justice moved my High Maker and Divine Power and the First Love made me
These are not offered as refutations nor as red herrings but as statements about what keeps me chewing on these questions.
The Old Testament is the foreshadowing of the New One. The Jews did not have full revelation. This is, at least, how the Church explains some of these oddities.
The idea of an unchanging, eternal God, is not part of the OT revelation. The idea that God is Love and always love, isn't either. Neither are the ideas that God gives only blessings, to the pious and the impious, or the idea of God who loves even the condemned.
For if God is Life, how can He be the source of death? If God is Perfection, how can He be the author of chaos? If God is good, how can He be the source of evil?
Anything else implies a God that is not eternal and unchanging.
Finally, the Bible (and indeed everything) must be 'understood' in its totality and not by textproofing, which is to say 'out-of-context.' You can't read a sentence in a book and know what the whole book is about.
What matters is spiritual meaning, not literal.
Part of the message of the NT is that the OT does not show the fullness of God's revelation. But it is there, although not necessarily obvious. We see it now, but thanks only to the New Testament.
For right after saying He creates light and darkness1, and calamity...the prophet writes
"Let the heavens rejoice from above, and let the clouds rain righteousness; let the earth bring forth, and blossom with mercy, and bring forth righteousness likewise; I am the Lord that created you" [LXX, Isa 45:8]
1I thought in the beginning darkness existed before God said "Let there be light!" Are we to understand that God created darkness before He created light?
So, God brings righteousness and joy, and mercy. To those who hate Him, His love is camality. to those who love Him, bliss.
God is actually nothing we can ever imagine or fully know. How can be imagine or 'understand' eternal, unchanging, transcendetal? The only way we can approach God in any way is through His humanity in the image and Person of Christ Jesus. Christ eliminates the need for anthropomorphism of God, where most of our erroneous concepts come from.